


Second Wind

by imperfectabstraction



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Quirks (My Hero Academia), Alternate Universe-Heroes and Villains, Billy Hargrove Being an Asshole, Billy Hargrove is a Little Shit, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Enemies to Lovers, Gen, Graphic Description, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Physical Abuse, Steve is a hero, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:21:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26571328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperfectabstraction/pseuds/imperfectabstraction
Summary: Billy Hargrove is a villain.Steve Harrington is a hero.They should be diametrically opposed. They should be repulsed by each other.That's how it starts. It isn't how it ends.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 4
Kudos: 32





	Second Wind

**Author's Note:**

> Please enjoy this Stranger Things/Boku no Hero AU.
> 
> No need to watch or understand Boku no Hero to read--all you really need to know is that people in this world have Quirks and Quirks can be equated to having a particular power/superpowers. Being a hero is an occupation.

Billy Hargrove hates heroes.

He’s hated heroes since he was nine years old and the smell of his mother’s burning flesh was stuck in his nose and the sound of her screams were ringing in his ears. He’s hated heroes since the day her screams for help went unanswered and his father forced him to watch her charred body melt into ash. Hated them even more because for a moment, while he watched his father set his mother ablaze, he had really believed that a hero would appear and save them both from their own personal monster, _their_ villain and everything would be okay.

He had believed that from watching heroes on tv, watching them pull people from burning buildings, punch holes into walls, send villains flying into the horizon, but most of all he had believed in heroes because of the awards they won and the speeches they gave. They’d always seemed so humble when accepting another medal from the city, like it wasn’t about the recognition, but about a real belief that the lives of _everyone_ mattered. _Billy mattered_.

What a crock of shit that had turned out to be. No hero dressed in white appeared to save Billy’s mother from being burned alive at the hands of her abusive ex-husband. No hero came looking for Billy when his father dragged him out of the only real home he had ever known and drove him away into a hell he would never escape from.

No hero ever noticed the burns on his back, his palms, the bottoms of his feet, or chest. They never heard him screaming in pain in the night as his father set fire to his wings, over and over, and over again to make sure he knew that he could never fly away from the man who created him and therefore owned him.

Heroes didn’t hear the cries of people like Billy; backwater trash that lived out of a trailer park and stole bottles and plastic out of the trash can just to make enough money to afford a bag of chips from the 7-11. They only heard the cries of people who were living in a metropolis, working toward getting degrees, and living in a house with 1.5 kids and a fucking dog.

People like Billy didn’t matter to heroes because they were just going to come out being villains anyway. Who cared if they were starving? Abused? Living in terror? The stage had already been set for someone like Billy to use poverty as an excuse to terrorize the good, hard working masses of the world.

Fuck people like Billy.

Fuck every little girl and boy and anyone in between that had gotten the short stick in life, there were more important people to save. People with futures. People who were gonna live past 40. People who weren’t as damaged as Billy, who weren’t going to use a shitty childhood as an excuse to burden the government’s resources.

Heroes had told him to go fuck himself, so they could go fuck themselves too.

It wasn’t hard to become a villain, even simpler when he acknowledged that his father was never going to let him be anything else. Fighting heroes was an adrenaline rush and an opportunity to punish them for their feigned altruism and benevolence. Billy loved pushing them over the edge until their ugliness showed, when they started beating him because it felt good instead of trying to stop him from robbing some old broad or holding up a store. He wanted the world to see the ugliness that was really hiding inside these “modern age knights” so that kids like Billy would know better than to think that they could call out for them and that these pretentious fucks would answer.

Being a villain was easy for someone as filled with resentment and hate and rage as Billy, but as he stood at his father’s side and looked into the all black gaze of Martin Brenner, better known as The Mindflayer, he couldn’t help but wonder if he could really even call himself a villain in the face of someone whose very pores seemed to ooze evil.

Martin Brenner at first seemed like an unassuming, older man. He was thin and pale with well coifed grey hair. Nothing special. No one Billy would look at twice unless you happened to catch sight of his eyes behind his sunglasses. It was the eyes that gave him away, eyes without whites, that at first seemed as if they were just an enlarged pupil, until you looked closer, and watched something inky and malevolent swirl through them. Something unnatural. Something that reminded Billy a little bit of hell.

“What is it that I and my son can help you with, Mr. Brenner?” His father asks beside him, his tone giving nothing away.

Billy wonders if his father really is as calm as he seems. He had seemed surprised when Brenner’s men had knocked on their door and requested an audience. Brenner is the first person who has ever managed to track them down like this. Billy’s father might be violent, but he has never been stupid. He’s always known to never stay in the same place for too long, to avoid the attention of highly ranked heroes, and prey on the people less likely to be cared about. Neil Hargrove isn’t even on the villain registry, unlike Billy, though they only know Billy by his villain name, Camaro. He doesn’t even think his father has a villain name.

Brenner smiles at them in a way that makes Billy shiver. “I’ve been watching you and your son, Mr. Hargrove. I have been very impressed with your ability to stay discreet despite enacting such beautiful acts of chaos and violence. At first I believed that the two of you were just thieves but after discovering what happened to the dearly departed Mrs. Hargrove, I must say that I realized how valuable you would be to my organization.”

Neil stiffens beside him. “I don’t know what you’re referring to. My son is a mechanic and I’m a construction worker. My wife went missing years ago. I have no idea what happened to Evelyn.”

“What a marvelous liar you are, Mr. Hargrove!” Brenner laughs. “I almost believed you for a moment. No, no, sir, I am referring to the fact that you are responsible for burning your young, mischievous wife alive 16 years ago and to the various other lives you’ve taken with that Lava Quirk of yours to sustain your own lifestyle.”

Billy watches his father’s fist clench at his side and wonders if his father is really about to try to take on The Mindflayer when Brenner is Number One in the villain rankings. Neither of them even know what Brenner’s Quirk is, but judging by the body count the man has raked up, even Billy’s not sure if his father’s Quirk can manage it. He knows better than to try and stop the man regardless and it’s hard enough controlling his face at hearing Brenner talk about his mother’s death so nonchalantly without actively trying to get in Neil’s way too.

“No need to get defensive, Mr. Hargrove. You are in safe company here,” Brenner says calmly. “I need men like you. Competent, diligent men, who aren’t afraid to wet their hands with a bit of blood to get what they want.”

Neil’s fist relaxes at his side, but his eyes narrow in suspicion. “I’ll ask again then, Mr. Brenner. What is it that you want from me and my son?”

“I would like you and your son to work for me,” Brenner explains. “There is a group of heroes that has recently garnered my ire. They took something from me. At first I wanted it back but now, now I realize that what is truly merited is punishment. I want to see them destroyed and to that end, I need to expand the number of warriors I have to work for me.”

“Which group of heroes?” Billy pipes up.

Brenner gives him his full attention for the first time, the full force of his gaze enough for Billy to have to actively resist taking a step backward from the man. “The Hawkins Hero Agency.”

Billy can’t help but scoff at that. The Hawkins Hero Agency is made up of _the_ up and coming heroes of his generation. King, The Freak, and Heroine Justice have been on more magazines than Billy has burns on his body. The sidekicks of the organization are expected to advance to pro heroes in a few years with The Child, Zombie Boy, and Beastling already becoming household names with large fanbases. That doesn’t even include the fact that the agency is led by one of the most infamous heroes of all time, Grizzly, whose super strength even gave the Symbol of Peace a run for his money once upon a time.

They’re exactly the type of group that Billy’s father has strategically avoided all his life. There is no way that Neil is going to agree to this. Brenner is out of his mind.

“If we refuse?” His father asks, a frown forming on his thin lips.

“If you were to refuse, Mr. Hargrove, I would be sorely disappointed but ultimately get what I want, regardless,” Brenner sighs.

His father opens his mouth, possibly to tell Brenner to go fuck himself when the elderly man suddenly snaps his fingers. A series of humanoid shapes emerge out of the shadows, each one of them nearly 10 feet in height. They’re ugly and misshapen with their arms draping across the floor, ribs seemingly hidden beneath only the thinnest layer of what looks like rotting skin. Their heads are massive and it’s only when they step completely from the shadows that Billy can see that there is no face where there should be, only what looks like some sort of mutated bulb of what once was a flower. One of the creatures comes forward to stand next to Brenner’s desk, opening its face to reveal enormous petals full of teeth and let out a screeching roar.

Neil comes beside him, fist in flame, as Billy’s wings burst through his skin and sharpen into steel. “What the fuck?” Billy breathes.

Brenner strokes the hideous creature’s back and the creature lets out a purr at the sensation, drool spilling free onto the floor from its horrendous mouth. “Are either of you familiar with the missing hero, Militant Might?”

Billy and his father just stare at the man, both of them bewildered by his madness.

“Better known as Benjamin Hammond? Once a colleague to Grizzly?” Brenner asks. “No? Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter because _this_ is Mr. Hammond now.”

Billy has never seen his father look scared before but he does now. Neil’s eyes are wide with fear, his face pale as he stares at the monster that was once a hero. His fist is visibly shaking.

“Dad?” Billy whispers, feeling all at once like a child again, as he watches the villain of his world turn into a frozen, terrified mass beside him.

“This is my Quirk, gentlemen. I am able to transform beings of this world into their darkest counterparts. I remake them in a new image of what I aspire this world to be, a world of decay, chaos, and pain. They are controlled as if they are all members of a hive mind, their memories, personalities, appearance, all destroyed to ensure that the only part of them that remains alive is their strength and a permanent loyalty to me and me alone,” Brenner says with a smile at the monster beside him.

“Now there is a downside to this remarkable Quirk. All of my creatures lose their intelligence. I must always think for them. It gives me quite a headache, you see. I’ve found that I can only control approximately 100 at a time before I develop a migraine so extreme I end up losing days of my time for need of bed rest,” Brenner sighs. “That’s why I would prefer to build my ranks with already thinking, intelligent men such as yourselves. To hide murder as well as you do, Mr. Hargrove? Clearly you could be a real asset to me. And young William here? He has evaded capture from heroes time and time again. Even now none of the heroes know his true name. It would delight me if you would join me. It would be such a waste to destroy such clever, deviant minds. But,” Brenner shrugs. “One must do what one must.”

The creature takes a step toward them, another hellish screech leaving its mouth.

Neil quells the fire in his fist. He sounds as broken as Billy has ever heard him when he says, “What is it you would like us to do, Mr. Brenner?”

The monster stops moving, looks at them both with its head cocked to the side before stepping backward into the shadows.

Underneath his clothes, Billy is covered in a cold sweat.

“Good choice, Mr. Hargrove. I knew you were a clever man,” Brenner smiles.

And that’s how it begins

_Martin Brenner/Mind-Flayer: Quirk-Flay-He can transform other living beings into monsters enslaved to his will by breathing the miasma that makes up his internal system into their mouths. Once transformed, he controls the creature’s every thought and action, but must expend significant mental energy to control multiple creatures at a time._

Brenner assigns him to work with a villain named Terentacula. Terentacula is a blonde woman in her fifties that seems incapable of smiling. Her hair is cut short in a curled sort of bob. She’s wearing a blue button down and grey slacks the first time Billy meets her outside of a bustling café. She looks like any other business woman as she sips at a venti black coffee, completely inconspicuous as other patrons chat around them.

Billy wonders what people must think of him sitting in a pealing leather jacket and a bleach stained green t-shirt next to a woman who clearly comes from money. Maybe they look like they’re having an affair. Maybe he just looks like he could be her rebel son. Either way, he’s surprised by how few people are looking at them as they sit across from each other, as if two people from such different worlds look perfectly right having coffee together.

“You have a flying Quirk, correct?” Terentacula asks before taking another sip of her coffee, her flat blue eyes staring up at him from the rim of her mug.

Billy nods. “Yeah. My wings retract. I can also make them hard as steel and project them like knives.”

She hums in mild interest. “Good. You’ll be able to tell me when the heroes start arriving onto the scene from up above,” she says, reaching into her purse and passing him a set of earbuds across the table. “We’ll use these to communicate with one another during missions. If today goes well, you and I will be assigned as permanent partners.”

Billy pockets the ear buds with a frown. “I thought Brenner wanted me _and_ my dad,” he says slowly.

“For now, you and your father are a flight risk. Harder to run if there’s another person around to clip your wings, so to speak. Your father has been assigned a new partner as well. When you have both proven your loyalty, you’ll be allowed to work together again,” Terentacula smirks.

The idea that Billy and his father could ever trust each other enough to rely on each other and plot against someone else is laughable. Neil would never hesitate to throw Billy under the bus if it meant saving his own ass, would probably even kill Billy just to prove his loyalty if given the opportunity. He had no real desire to work with his father but working with a stranger was dangerous, especially when he had no idea what her abilities were and how far her loyalty to a mad man extended.

“What’s your Quirk?” Billy asks as he kicks his dirty boots up onto an empty chair beside him.

“My Quirk is difficult to explain. Better to see it,” she says over the top of her cup. She takes a long sip of her coffee before she sets the mug down and dabs at her thin lips with a cloth napkin.

In the moment between her placing her napkin down on the table and their barista returning with Billy’s cold brew, Terentacula’s slim fingers transform into pink tentacles, each one as wide as Billy’s shoulders and long as half the length of an Olympic pool. The patrons scream as her tentacles spill out across their table and over the patio. The sound of tables upturning, harried footsteps, and broken crockery fill up Billy’s senses.

Their poor barista didn’t even have time to run before Terentacula’s tentacles are on him, suckers pulling at the young man’s skin and clothes. He spills Billy’s cold brew in his desperate attempt to get away, his pristine white dress shirt browned with liquid. His eyes are bulging as he attempts to fight the villain’s grip. His fists slam into the pink flesh of the tentacles that begin to constrict him. The man’s face goes red, then purple as Billy watches, too stunned by the suddenness of it all to even move.

Terentacula crushes the barista in her grip. Billy can hear the man’s bones grind together before they snap at the pressure being exerted upon them. The barista keeps staring at Billy, like Billy is supposed to do something, like anyone could do something at this rate. Billy stares back as the man’s flailing limbs go still and the tentacles climb up his body and a resounding crack echoes from the man’s spine. The barista’s eyes grow distant as the tentacles come up over his head.

Billy turns to Terentacula, who looks as calm and unaffected as ever, and hopes that the horror he feels doesn’t show on his face. It must because the blonde villain smiles at him—a mocking, pitying thing—before she gazes back at the barista trapped in between what Billy then realizes are her fingers before a pulse of pressure crushes the man’s body into a mangled lump of tissue, cloth, bone and hair that she drops unceremoniously to the floor. Blood dribbles from her tentacles and pools on the ground beneath the wad of what remains of their barista.

“Judging by the look on your face, I take it you’ve never killed before,” Terentacula says calmly, pulling back her tentacles to wipe her bloodied fingers on her napkin. “Fortunately for you, your task today is not to kill but to distract. You will stay up high and inform me when the heroes arrive. When they arrive, you and I will engage them, but until then my task is to create as much chaos and unrest as possible. For too long the people of this world have sat comfortable and safe, thinking that heroes would always be here to save them. It’s time we taught them how much their little lives mean to these heroes.”

He stares up at her, unmoving until the blonde woman sighs and strikes his shoulder with her human fist. “Fly away, little bird, you have work to do.”

The contact makes him jump into action, arms pulling out of his jacket almost on auto-pilot before his wings burst free from his back and send him into the air, far away from the hellscape that the villainess has created. He flies toward a clock tower east of their meeting place—the same direction that Grizzly’s heroes will most likely be coming from once they hear of the attack on the coffee shop. His feet stumble when he lands on the roof of the tower only to fall to his knees and vomit over the side of the railing. His entire body shakes in time with his racing heart. He had lived with a monster for so long that somehow he forgotten that there were others out there. Seeing Brenner should have reminded him, but despite the villain’s monsters he had not shown Billy his true nature.

Terentacula had.

She’d killed a man she didn’t even know and never even blinked. She wiped his blood off her fingers like she’d been inconvenienced by it. Even his father seemed to feel something when he hurt someone or killed someone. There was some sadistic glee in his face or the shadow of his unending rage. Terentacula killed as easily as she breathed. As if it wasn’t even something that she had to think about anymore.

His father was a murderer but Terentacula was something else; something that Billy didn’t want to become. She was also someone who he needed to impress. It was clear that barista could just as easily be Billy. If he failed this mission or failed Brenner in general, he had no doubt those tentacles would crush him in their grasp until all that was left was sinew and the remnants of bones.

Billy was a survivor. He’d survived years of his father, learned how to grit his teeth and hold in screams when his father pressed his flaming hands against his body, how to take a punch, and how to punch back, kick, scratch, and stab until he was the only one left standing. He wasn’t going to let Terentacula kill him when he was getting so close to finally gaining enough strength to finally beat his father and be free of him forever. He wasn’t going to see his mother on anyone’s terms but his.

Wiping the vomit from his lips, he forced himself to stand. A subtle shiver ran through him as goosebumps raised across his arms. He was afraid, but he had always been afraid. Fear had made him smart, made him strong. He’d be damned if he was crushed beneath such a familiar emotion now.

All he had to do was lookout for Grizzly’s heroes and hold them off long enough for Terentacula to cause as much damage as she could. There was nothing he could do for the people that would fall at her tentacled hands; all he could do was avoid joining them in their fate. Billy was good at avoiding things.

After all, he had made it to 25 under Neil Hargrove’s roof.

He stares out across the clock tower, blue gaze hard as he searches for the red and white van that heralds the arrival of Grizzly’s team. A few vehicles look like they may belong to smaller, weaker local heroes, but he can see that they are more focused on clearing the area than engaging Terentacula, probably cowed by the woman’s ruthlessness and the strength of her Quirk.

It doesn’t take long for the sound of sirens to permeate the air and a moment later he takes in the sight of a red and white van bearing the roaring Grizzly decal on the side leading a pack of police vehicles toward the café.

Billy takes a deep breath and urges himself to calm. He can handle a fight with heroes. He can channel all of this fear and anger and put it into his feathers and fists and make these so called heroes regret putting him in this position in the first place.

He dives over the tower, wings hardening as he glides toward the van. He pushes a button on his earpiece, the device bursting to life with a whir as the city grows larger beneath him. “They’re here. I’m gonna take down the van.”

“If Grizzly is on site, leave him to me,” Terentacula orders, voice grainy as the wind glides over his face.

“I got no problem with that,” Billy replies, abruptly pulling forward with his wings outspread just as the van turns a corner to meet him.

He sees a man with a bowl cut behind the wheel of the van. His brown eyes go wide when he sees Billy in front of him before he twists the steering wheel to the right, the van skidding perpendicularly before crashing into a police car and falling onto its side.

The police cars stop, some officers attempting to open their doors with guns drawn before Billy sends his wings shooting toward them, stabbing into the metal sheets of the vehicles, popping tires, and sending more cars careening into each other with an explosion of sound.

A light smirk graces his lips. Chaos he knows. Chaos he can summon with a wave of his hand. “Sorry about that,” he says with a drawl. “Did I get in your way?”

Two police officers drag an injured man out of one of the cars Billy has impaled, his leg a bloodied mess that twists behind him as they rush to safety.

No one emerges from Grizzly’s van.

Billy throws his arms up and laughs. “I was hoping for a bit of a challenge from one of the best hero organizations in town. Guess I’ll just have to amuse myself until some real heroes arrive,” he taunts, flying an arm forward to send more of his feathers out like projectiles until the police are simply fleeing, covering their heads and stomachs with their arms as they duck for cover.

“You in there, Grizzly? I gotta say I am less than impressed if you are; didn’t realize that the third best Hero in the country was such a fucking coward; guess you really don’t have anything on All Might, after all,” he sneers.

A solid wall of air sends him flying backwards, his wings just barely able to catch hold of the blast and keep him upright.

From the side of the uprooted van, a man approaches, his eyes glowing golden as his voluminous brown hair whips around his face. “Grizzly’s not here, asshole, but I’m sure I can give you a run for your money,” those pale pink lips snarl around the words.

The hero in front of him is undeniably more beautiful than even the magazine articles and videos Billy has seen give him credit for. His pale skin seems to glow in the morning light and a series of delicious moles dot the creamy skin that is visible under his white, black, and gold hero suit.

King; the rising elemental hero stands before him looking like a pissed off wet dream.

Billy would end up having to fight someone he would rather fuck into the mattress.

He whistles low in his throat. “Those are big words, pretty boy. Sure you can live up to them?” Billy says with a smirk.

“You tell me, asshole!” King snaps, sending a sharp gust of wind towards him.

Billy manages to dodge the hyper compacted air, sliding just to the side as the invisible projectile sends two police cars slamming into each other. A cackle breaks free from his throat as exhilaration fills him. King is not just some low-level hero with rich parents to vault him into notable hero agencies before his time. He’s a fighter, just like Billy.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Billy hoots, throwing his hands up into the air as he dodges another well placed explosive ball of air. “This is the King I’ve heard so much about. He came to play today.”

The fire in King’s eyes makes his heart race even faster. “This isn’t a game, jerkoff. Unlike you, I don’t play with other people’s lives!” The wind hero growls.

“Aww, here I was thinking we were playing with each other. You got someone else on your mind right now, pretty boy? I’m wounded. Guess I’ll have to make sure those eyes stay on me!” Billy laughs, sending his knives flying with a swipe of his hand, the metal feathers singing as King spins into a miniature tornado, whipping Billy’s feathers all around them.

A feather strikes Billy in his shoulder, rebounded straight into the meaty flesh of his muscle with enough force to send him stumbling, wings failing for a moment in shock as his booted feet make hard contact with the sidewalk below. Blood drips from the wound until it spills down his arm and in between his fingertips, staining the ground in freckles of crimson. A quick glance at his shoulder reveals the feather is more than halfway inside his shoulder—it’ll be a real bitch to pull out later, but somehow the fact that he knows King has left a scar on him makes heat pool into his stomach.

Not the time though.

“You trying to kill me, hero?” Billy taunts, glancing at his watch. He has about ten minutes left in steel wing mode before he defaults back to the soft, downy feathers that his mother used to tell him made him look like an angel. He’s got to take King down before then or he’ll be at too great of a disadvantage. The weight of his steel wings makes him less susceptible to getting caught in one of King’s wind attacks, but his regular feathers would probably be sucked in easily, if not ripped apart on impact and his father has painstakingly ripped each feather off his back enough times to know that he would be out for at least two weeks if that happens. He has no desire to spend another fourteen days of his life whimpering and nearly bleeding out on the bathroom floor with only a bottle of whiskey to help him sleep through the pain as his feathers grow back in.

A look of disgust mars the pretty features of King’s face. “I’m not like you, villain. I’m not a killer.”

The words set Billy off. He’s a lot of things, but a killer isn’t one of them. He’s never stepped over the line his father has so clearly carved into the ground. A growl churns in his throat. “Fuck you,” he sneers, diving forward to race straight at the brunette hero—a silver bullet aimed and shooting toward its target.

The hero’s eyes widen as propels his arms forward in large, sweeping gestures, the ground beneath them ripping apart at the pressure the air missiles create. Billy dodges them as best he can, pulling his wings back tighter to increase his speed and spinning around two of the hero’s attacks. Another catches him at the waist, ripping through his shirt and leaving bruises in its wake as Billy grits his teeth against the pain.

King isn’t his father. Not in occupation or in Quirk. Neil Hargrove barely needs to move to set his opponents ablaze. King has to make use of his whole body to attack—which means that if he loses mobility he’ll be less of a threat. Billy has to get in close, keep those lithe, long limbs from spreading out if he wants to put this wannabe royal into the ground. King has the advantage at long distance.

Getting close is about as hard as he expected. King knows his own weaknesses and is doing everything he can to keep Billy at a distance. The hero sends a volley of air based attacks toward him, some of them spiraling out and forcing Billy to go higher and higher into the air and away from King to avoid them, others compacted enough that Billy knows they could blow off a limb if he wasn’t able to dance around them on his wings. He’s starting to understand each of the hero’s movements as their dance goes on.

A sweeping gesture means a knife like pillar of air is coming, a turn of his heel and a swung out arm means Billy can expect a spiral, two arms raised up from the waist creates that powerful blockade of air that had thrown him off in the beginning. What’s interesting is that the hero seems to have little tolerance for his own frustration. The more he misses the sloppier his attacks get, his arms less cutting and more akimbo as a scowl is painted across his face. Billy wonders if he can actually tire the other hero out until he reaches his limit, as a sheen of sweat has began to cover the hero’s pale flesh, but he won’t risk it. It’s in that last minute of exhaustion and desperation that sometimes one’s true power emerges. He would know.

Right when he starts thinking that he has the King down to a fine science that frankly Billy could study all night long if given the option, the pretty boy pulls a new move out of his arsenal. The hero clenches his right fist, bending his arm at the elbow, before pulling the extremity toward his own chest with a vicious jerk. A funnel of air emerges from out of the ground, pulling Billy by his ankles.

He nearly panics at the strength of the pull, fearful of being ripped apart by the gales until he realizes that it’s trying to pull him right into the eye of the storm. He spreads his wings out to full capacity, nearly blinding the hero as the sun reflects off the shining steel. He fights against the pull, but it’s not enough. He is pulled into the vortex, wings forced near completely vertical as he plummets towards the Earth.

He shoots a few projectiles out of the swirling air he can’t see out of, hopes it strikes the hero in his stupid pretty face as he is pulled in deeper. He feels like an idiot. He should have known from that mini defensive tornado that King could create a wind tunnel. If he hadn’t been too busy watching that long, muscled body move and those rosy lips curl into a snarl he could have better prepared for this.

The vortex evaporates just as the ground appears too close to avoid, setting him free with barely two feet between him and being a splat on the concrete. A bewildered laugh comes out of his throat. Is this hero serious? He doesn’t want to permanently injure Billy so he showed him mercy at the last second?

What an idiot.

But it isn’t mercy he realizes a second two late, as a new figure appears where the center of the vortex once was, grabbing at his boot with pale fingers before he can fly away.

It’s teamwork.

The Freak has him by the ankle. Billy jerks to get out of his hold, but the motion brings him right into the eye line of the bowl cut hero with dark bags under his eyes. The hero’s eyes glow bright green before he disappears and it’s Billy’s father that has him by the ankle now.

“You stupid piece of shit,” Neil Hargrove says in a deadly whisper. “Can you do anything right? Can’t even beat this prissy little fairy when our lives are on the line? I ought to get rid of you now before you can piss off Brenner any further. You won’t drag my name into the dirt,” Neil says as flames start licking up Billy’s boot.

“No, please, I’m sorry. I’ll beat him, I promise. I promise, just let me try again! I’m sorry!” Billy panics as the heat of his father’s hand melts his boot right off before burning through the flesh of ankle.

A sick smile grows on his father’s face at his pleading. “I want to hear you scream just like your mother did.”

He does. He screams and flails as the flames travel up his legs, wings dropping out of steel mode as panic drags him to the hard ground, kicking and screaming as his jeans are burned, as he watches his own flesh start to melt from his own bones. His fingernails scrape at the sidewalk as he tries to pull away from the iron grip his father has on his ankle, the smell of his own flesh making fresh bile rise up his burning throat.

He sees the metal buckle of his belt glow red with heat as the burns become more excruciating, but somehow he doesn’t pass out, just like his mother didn’t. He’s gonna have to watch himself be burned alive, he’s gonna have to feel every moment of it. He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe.

He’s going to die. He’s finally going to die at his father’s hands and no one will care.

This is finally it.

Until it isn’t.

A now familiar tentacle emerges to crush the grip had on his ankle. A pained, unfamiliar yelp has Billy turning wide, tear filled eyes toward his father only to see The Freak on his knees and Terentacula standing above him. She holds the unmoving, bloody legs of a police officer in another tentacle, shiny department issued shoes drenched in blood.

It was an illusion, Billy realizes as snot runs down his nose. That’s The Freak’s Quirk—he can make illusions of his opponent’s greatest fear once he looks into their eyes. His father was never there.

He was safe.

And more pissed off than he had ever been in his entire life.

“You fucking asshole!” He raged, as he kicked the hero squarely in the face, watching in grim satisfaction as the bone crunched into the fucker’s ugly face. “I’m gonna fucking kill you!” He growls, ripping one of his feathers free and turning it to steel to stab the hero in his fucking face.

Terantacula grabs his wrist with a tentacle in warning, as the rest of her tentacles repeatedly smack against the bursts of explosive air that King sends toward them as he tries to protect his comrade. “We’ve done what we came to do. The other heroes are on their way. At least eight of them and two of them are senior pro heroes that are high in the rankings. I can’t fight them and babysit you. We have to retreat.”

“Not until I make this fucker pay!” Billy snaps, lunging forward to try and stab the hero again only to be struck in the face by a tentacle, his lip splitting at the force of the impact.

“Are you an obedient dog or a feral one?” Terantacula asks.

“What?” Billy asks, spitting blood onto the floor.

The villainess takes two tentacles and lifts The Freak by the neck. The hero struggles against the hold, face turning purple as the tentacles tighten around his pale neck. She throws him carelessly into the side of a police car, the hero’s body crumbling on impact. She kneels on the ground in front of Billy, seemingly unconcerned as King’s attacks halt and the other hero goes racing around them to his fallen comrade. “Are you an obedient dog or a feral one? Because feral dogs must always be put down. Do you want to be put down, William?”

His blood feels like it turns cold as he looks into her cold blue eyes before his gaze travels to King and The Freak; the golden hero holding the unconscious hero to his chest as blood begins to pool beneath the paler hero’s prone body.

He doesn’t want to die.

“Obedient,” he whispers.

“What was that?”

He turns away from King and his ally, just as the beautiful hero’s eyes turn toward them with a hate in them that Billy can understand.

Billy knows what’s going to happen next.

He rises to his feet and steps toward Terentacula until his hands are securely around her waist, her cold blue eyes boring into his. “I’m obedient,” he says with shame.

The villainess smirks at him until her tentacles retract, a perfectly normal, unassuming blonde woman stands in front of him once more, but this time her blue blouse is covered in blood. She pats him on the head with condescension. “Good dog,” she quips.

A scream of rage tears out of King. Billy’s hands tighten around Terentacula’s waist as he pulls them into the air just in time, the two villains staring as a tsunami level wind storm completely destroys the ground they were just standing on and the fleet of police cars that had responded to their crime. They look on as Billy rises higher and higher, breath held as light poles and trees are ripped apart in the face of King’s wrath.

Billy knows that rage. That hate.

He feels it every day.

He just didn’t know being on the receiving end of it would feel this bad.


End file.
